I spent the last week of December writing a long, extensive list of goals for 2020. The goals encompassed all aspects of life. By January 1 I had 10 pages of personal, spiritual, professional, relational, financial and parenting goals. Some of the goals were task-oriented, others were more values-based. Either way, I was ready for 2020. Then came the pandemic, tanking TpT sales and a sudden move. So while my values-based goals have become more relevant, my task-oriented goals have become less relevant. I’ve had to adjust my goals and expectations, and with the uncertainty looming over the 2020-2021 school year, more adjustment is sure to come. So I’ve been…
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Sketch Your Genre Unit in 6 Steps
If you want to teach your reading curriculum through a series of in-depth genre units (if you want to implement genre study), here’s your planning mantra: Collect, Immerse, Teach, Notice, Define, Analyze. In this post, I’ll summarize each of the six steps and explain how you can organize your lessons (all lessons, even the ones that aren’t genre-specific) logically across a unit. Here we go! Six Steps to Genre Unit Collect Quality Texts: This part is all you, the teacher. When you begin planning your genre unit, collect a big ol’ stack of grade-level picture books from the genre (bring one of those plastic crates on wheels to the library…or…
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A Versatile Template for Read Alouds (Free Download)
One of my favorite things about reading workshop is finding and sharing picture books with students. Shared readings generate discussions (academic and personal) that are relevant to your kiddos . While ‘meeting student needs’ is one of the great benefits of shared readings, it’s also one of the great challenges. Suiting a favorite read aloud to this particular class year after year can be time consuming. When I was creating my series of genre units, I wanted to include discussion guides for shared readings that would be versatile enough to fit a range of needs, but specific enough to make them low-prep for teachers. I ended up a creating a…
